In This Issue 13.02

Abstract

We follow up our special issue on Argentinian philosophy with a selection of essays that continue to expand and pluralize our sense of the philosophical enterprise. In “Aesthetic Negation and Citation: Levinas, Agnon, and the Paradox of Literature,” Lawrence Harvey complicates our expectation that Levinas had an ethical aversion to literature. Not only is Totality and Infinity, for example, bracketed with literary allusions, his mature work makes frequent and appreciative use of it. The author turns to S. Y. Agnon (1888–1970) to offer a complementary model of the ethical force of the kind of literature that “‘de-nucleates’ the totalizing solidity of the underlying Platonic forms.” In “Is Anti-Oedipus Really a Critique of Psychoanalysis?” Axel Chemiavsky explores the foundations of critique in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus and suggests that the authors combine a Kantian delimitation of the synthesis of the unconsciousness and Nietzsche’s conception of life. Chemiavsky proceeds by first looking at how Anti-Oedipus tries to distinguish between the illegitimate and legitimate uses of synthesis, turning to the question of the object for critique. Psychoanalysis as a conception of life, as Deleuze and Guattari formulate it, is a particular “configuration of desire” where desire itself is multiple. Leo Kwok looks at the problem of what makes understanding philosophical traditions across cultures possible or impossible. The dilemma that either one “assimilates” one tradition into the other or declares an “incommunicability” thesis assumes that intercultural understanding is identical to intercultural philosophy. To solve this dilemma Kwok proposes an approach of intercultural dialogue which begins with questioning, supplemented by what he calls the “TQX model.” This technique (if one may call it so) is demonstrated through looking at ideas from the Mencius and Levinas. He concludes by giving an example of intercultural dialogue with an investigation into the concept of dao as “origin” and Derrida’s articulations of “genesis.” Jiani Fan pushes against the general conception that Nietzsche is an heir to the Ancient Skeptics, contending that Nietzsche’s position is much more ambivalent, his inheritance not without critique. Through an exploration of Nietzsche’s rhetoric, Fan examines the peculiarity of his literary style that, while indebted to the Pyrrhonians, nevertheless reveals an “assertive” yet “non-committal” perspective. This tension reveals a particular uncertainty in value judgments that do not allow for interrogation into presuppositions and criteria. Joshua Stoll in “Being to Being: Sartre, Ramchandra Gandhi, and Abhinavagupta on Intersubjectivity” critically intervenes into Sartre’s notorious assumption that “hell is other people” as we become trapped in the gaze (le regard) of others. Turning to the advaita or non-dual thought of the contemporary Indian philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi as well as the medieval Kashmiri thinker Abhinavagupta, the author provides a contrary reading in which the primary relationship becomes subjectifying and liberating. Our issue includes review essays of two important new works. Glen A. Mazis discusses Adam Loughnane’s Merleau-Ponty and Nishida: Artists Expressing Faith Intrinsic to Embodiment and Mike Grimshaw reflects on Saitya Das’s provocative new work on Kierkegaard’s political theology. It concludes with Yan Yan’s book review of Galen A. Johnson, Mauro Carbone, and Emmanuel de Saint Aubert’s Merleau-Ponty’s Poetic of the World: Philosophy